Luke Hochevar as was predicted shortly before the start of the draft. Now we clearly see the good and the bad of the MLB Entry Draft. The Bad? No trades. And we have no idea who any of these guys are. The Good? About 2 minutes between each pick. I always hate the amount of time between picks in the NFL draft, but this is almost too quick. We are following along on MLB.com and the announcers barely have time to give any analysis on the players. Before we even had a chance to start writing this post, the Rockies had already picked Greg Reynolds, followed very quickly by the Devil Rays selection of Evan Longoria, the first position player taken in the draft. Andrew Miller who was originally projected as the top pick was just selected with the 6th selection.

Here is the player profile of Longoria from the Long Beach State Athletics website. Interestingly, they are called the Dirtbags. Of special note is that Longoria was named the Cape Cod League’s MVP last fall. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the Cape Cod League. It is a fall league for amateur baseball players that give players a chance to compete against other players with Major League potential. Of special interest to the scouts is among other things, how well hitters do with wood bats. Many players struggle in the transition from metal to wood. Longoria appears as though he will not be one of those players. He batted .299 and led the league with 8 home runs and 35 RBI, over a 45 game schedule.